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Monday, January 23, 2012

In 2009, Casey Pugh asked thousands of internet users to remake Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope into a fan film, 15 seconds at a time. Contributors were allowed to recreate scenes from that film however they wanted. Within just a few months, Star Wars Uncut grew into a wild success. In 2010 its creators won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media.

This crowd-sourced project is finally online for your streaming pleasure (or kneejerk disgruntlement). The "Director's Cut" is a feature-length film that contains hand-picked scenes from the entire collection.

This cut is over two hours long, far more than I'm able to stick with it in one go. However, take 15 minutes to jump-click through various scenes. Star Wars itself of course needs no introduction or synopsis, though this time we get it performed by an amateur cast of hundreds, stitched together with Gorilla Glue and paper clips, shot in environments real and animated, presented and reconceived with a low-tech, zero-budget aesthetic. Many of the sequences are filmed in crudely comical fashion, daisy-chaining, for instance, live action college pals wearing paper hats, stop-motion animation using colored paper or Lego Star Wars figurines, Toy Story action figures, kitchen items, cartoon work recalling various nostalgia touchstones, parodies of pop culture subgenres such as anime and grindhouse, the family dog, and so on.

Love it or hate it (or some of both at various points), it's possibly the funniest, most charmingly obsessive-compulsive tribute vid ever slapped online.

I'm a Seattle-based writer who enjoys, well, a lot of things: movies, theater, books, astronomy, science fiction, a sense of humor, the lambent amber of firelight through Bowmore Darkest Islay, dogs, the combination of chocolate and orange....

"Jack Cole's 'Plastic Man' belongs high on any adult's How to Avoid Prozac list, up there with the best of S.J. Perelman, Laurel and Hardy, Damon Runyon, Tex Avery and the Marx Brothers." — Art Spiegelman, The New Yorker

"You know what your problem is? It's that you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.” — Steve Martin, Grand Canyon

Nick: "I'm a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune."Nora: "I read you were shot five times in the tabloids."Nick: "It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."— Myrna Loy and William Powell, The Thin Man

"I always dress appropriately and impeccably for all occasions. I would show you a snapshot of myself in a G-string, taken at Simm-La, with a flying wombat, dingo dog and a wily platypus." — Professor Posthlewhistle (W.C. Fields)

"Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle." — G.K. Chesterton